Pantheism, Its Story and Significance eBook

not in the forms desired by sensuous passion, but
in garlands of flowers and in delicate scents.
The wine is unstinted, yet tempered with sparkling
water. But, lest the plentifulness of bread and
honey and cheese upon the lordly table should eclipse
the highest sanctions of human joy, an altar prominent
in the festive scene is heaped with offerings of flowers.
Then the first note of music is the praise of God,
a praise taking form in blameless poetic myths and
holy thoughts. In such a feast the minds of the
guests are kindled with a desire to be capable of
doing right. “There is no harm in drinking
with reasonable moderation[10]; and we may honour the
guest who, warmed by wine, talks of such noble deeds
and instances of virtue as his memory may suggest.
But let him not tell of Titan battles, or those of
the giants or centaurs, the fictions of bygone days,
nor yet of factious quarrels, nor gossip, that can
serve no good end. Rather let us ever keep a
good conscience towards the gods."[11]

[Sidenote: Empedocles, Middle of Fifth Century
B.C.]

[Sidenote: Not Properly a Pantheist]

Having given so much space to an ancient who seems
to me specially interesting as a prophet of the ultimate
apotheosis of earthly religions, I must be content
to indicate, in a very few lines, the course of the
Pantheistic tradition among the Greeks after his day.
The arithmetical mysticism of Pythagoras has no bearing
upon our subject. Empedocles of Agrigentum, living
about the middle of the fifth century B.C., and thus,
perhaps, in the second generation after Xenophanes,
was, in many respects, a much more imposing figure—­clothed
in purple, wielding political power, possessing medical
skill, and even working miraculous cures, such as
are apparently easy to men of personal impressiveness,
sympathy, and “magnetism.” But he
does not appear to have so nearly anticipated modern
Pantheism as did his humbler predecessor. For
though the fragments of Empedocles, much larger in
volume than those of Xenophanes, certainly hint at
some kind of everlasting oneness in things, and expressly
tell us that there is no creation nor annihilation,
but only perpetual changes of arrangement, yet they
present other phases of thought, apparently irreconcileable
with the doctrine that there is nothing other than
God. Thus he teaches that there are four elements—­earth,
air, water and fire—­out of which all things
are generated. He also anticipates Lucretius in
his pessimistic view of humanity’s lot; and
insists on the apparently independent existence of
a principle of discord or strife in the Universe.
It would be a forced interpretation to suppose him
to have set forth precociously the Darwinian theory
of the struggle for life. For his notion seems
much more akin to the Zoroastrian imagination of Ahriman.
Again, he sings melodiously, but most unphilosophically,
of a former golden age, in which the lion and the
lamb would seem to have lain down together in peace;